Battle of the Wilderness

The Battle of the Wilderness, fought May 5–6, 1864, was the opening
engagement of the Overland
Campaign during the American Civil
War (1861–1865). The newly appointed general-in-chief of the Union armies, Ulysses S. Grant, personally led the
Army of the Potomac south across the
Rapidan River in what he hoped would be a quick maneuver around the right flank of
Confederate general Robert E. Lee and
his Army of Northern
Virginia. Instead, Lee engaged Grant where he had engaged Joseph Hooker almost exactly a year earlier—in the
seventy-square-mile patch of tangled undergrowth known as the Wilderness. The battle that resulted was uncoordinated,
bloody, and often confused, with a testy Grant pressing Lee's men on May 5 and very nearly
breaking through the Confederate lines on May 6. Lee was famously restrained by his men
from leading a countercharge, and his top lieutenant, James Longstreet, was seriously wounded when he was
accidently shot by Virginia troops near the spot where, at Chancellorsville the year before, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson had
been similarly wounded. Unlike Jackson, Longstreet survived, and amid burning trees the
Confederates won a tactical victory. Grant, however, refused to turn back, confronting Lee
again and again until finally stalling before Petersburg. MORE...

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Background

After a number of important victories in the
Western Theater, including at Shiloh (1862), Vicksburg (1863), and Chattanooga (1863),
United States president Abraham
Lincoln brought Ulysses S. Grant east and placed him in charge of all the Union
armies. Rather than command from Washington, D.C., however, Grant headquartered himself
with the Army of the Potomac, the Union's largest but least successful army, and instructed its
commander, George G. Meade:
"Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also." This was new for the Union army, which had
previously identified its goal not as the Confederate army but the Confederate capital,
Richmond. Fearing he wouldn't be
reelected in the fall without a significant military victory, Lincoln had instructed
Grant to seek out and destroy Lee. By his lights, caution and indecision had been the
Army of the Potomac's watchwords since the days of George B. McClellan; he hoped that Grant would
finally bring him results.

Unlike Ambrose E. Burnside and
Joe Hooker before him, Grant left the Army of the Potomac's organization and command
largely as he found it. He did appoint Philip H. Sheridan to lead the cavalry corps, and assigned James H. Wilson, a
topographical engineer and former member of Grant's staff, to command a 3,500-man
cavalry division. Grant also instructed Burnside's Ninth Corps, which had been fighting
in the West, to rejoin the Army of the Potomac, boosting Union force strength to
118,000, compared with Lee's 65,000.

Grant's army began crossing the
Rapidan River on Wednesday, May 4, 1864—the Second Corps under Winfield Scott Hancock at
Ely's Ford, and Gouverneur Warren's Fifth Corps and John Sedgwick's Sixth Corps both at
Germanna's Ford—and that night slowly converged around the Wilderness Tavern. Just to
the west lay Lee's veteran army, heavily outnumbered and its leadership less certain
than in the past. While James Longstreet ably commanded the First Corps, Richard S. Ewell and A. P. Hill, promoted to head the Second and
Third corps respectively, were not as reliable. Lee hoped to offset these disadvantages
by ensnaring Grant in the brambles of the Wilderness. He was assisted by James Wilson's
Union cavalry, which did not properly picket the roads. As morning dawned on May 5,
Grant's men had no idea that the Army of Northern Virginia was waiting to pounce.

The Battle

Union infantrymen in Charles Griffin's division
of Warren's corps were waiting for their turn to march along the Orange Turnpike when
Ewell's Confederates swarmed out of the woods near a clearing called Saunders Field.
With his cavalry already engaged, Grant ordered Warren's troops to attack "immediately
without taking time for dispositions." This, too, was new for the Army of the Potomac,
which was accustomed to ponderously and methodically arranging itself before launching
an attack. Perhaps that's why, in spite of the general-in-chief's orders, several
critical hours passed before the infantry made their assault. And when they finally did,
only three of the corps's five divisions had reached their positions. (To be fair, one
of them, under the Pennsylvania surgeon Samuel W. Crawford, was late because of the
surprise appearance of A. P. Hill's Confederates on the Orange Plank Road, about two and
a half miles south of the turnpike.)

When Warren's men finally attacked about one o'clock, they marched across Saunders
Field, Higgerson Field just to the south, and the woods in between. Griffin's men fared
particularly well at Saunders Field, but the Confederate position overlapped the Union
right, and Ewell's reserves had a habit of showing up at the right place and at the
right time. Griffin needed reinforcements and was not receiving them. Frustrated, he
stormed to the rear, where he found Meade and erupted into a rant witnessed by Grant.
("The air was full of God-damns," the historian Shelby Foote has written in one of many
embellishments of this famous incident.) Not quite catching Griffin's name, Grant
proclaimed, "Who is this General Gregg? You ought to arrest him!" Meade calmly
responded, "It's Griffin, not Gregg, and it's only his way of talking." (Griffin was a
popular Regular Army veteran whose classmates at West Point had included Confederate
generals Hill and Henry Heth and Union
general Burnside.)

For the moment, Meade's excuse settled the
situation, but Grant, unused to delay in the execution of his orders, let alone
insubordination, began to harbor doubts about the Army of the Potomac's command. He
ordered his generals on the Orange Plank Road to attack immediately without regard to
which troops were where. Winfield Scott Hancock advised against it, citing the overgrown
terrain of the Wilderness: "The ground over which I must pass is very bad—a perfect
thicket." Grant was in no mood to change his mind, and Hancock, unlike the units to the
north, moved forward. His men took heavy losses, but as he fed more and more troops into
the battle, the Confederate line began to buckle. By day's end, A. P. Hill's men were
just barely holding their ground.

Longstreet, meanwhile, was to the south and out of the fight, his men positioned along
the Catharpin Road. Lee ordered him to march to Hill's rescue and counterattack.
Expecting reinforcements to arrive in the morning, Hill told his men to rest rather than
dig entrenchments or straighten their lines. When Hancock renewed his attack at five
o'clock on the morning of May 6, however, Longstreet had still not arrived. Hill's men
collapsed. Only sixteen artillery pieces under William T. Poague—a Rockbridge County native who would
later serve as treasurer of the Virginia
Military Institute—managed to hold back the flood of Hancock's men until, at
around seven o'clock, Texans under Confederate general John Gregg suddenly appeared.

"Gregg's Texans came in line of battle at a
swinging gait from the rear of our position," Poague later wrote, "… [and] General Lee
was riding close behind them." His blood up, Lee readied to lead the charge himself
across Widow Tapp's Field, but his men began to shout, "Lee to the rear!" and "Go back,
General Lee, go back!" Regaining some of his composure, Lee stayed put as the Texas
Brigade marched into the fray. Their charge stabilized the Confederate line but at great
cost; the best estimates suggest that only a third of the brigade's 700–800 men
survived.

While the fighting raged around Widow Tapp's Field, the Confederates discovered an
unfinished railroad bed running south of and parallel to the Orange Plank Road and
determined that it would offer them the cover they needed to advance beyond Hancock's
left flank. Lee and Longstreet reacted immediately, sending a column, under the command
of Longstreet's staff officer Gilbert Moxley Sorrel, down the corridor. At about eleven
o'clock, Confederates emerged from the cut, rolling up the Union flank. Though
demoralized, the Union soldiers managed to regroup behind earthworks that ran along the
Brock Road.

In an effort to press the attack, Longstreet accompanied fresh troops advancing toward
the Brock Road line. The air was dark with smoke from a number of small forest fires,
and sight lines were further hampered by the dense brush of the Wilderness. As the
general approached Confederate units preparing to join the assault, including a brigade
of Virginians commanded by William
Mahone, shots rang out. Confederate general Micah Jenkins, a staff officer, and
a courier were all killed. Rounds slammed into Longstreet's right arm and neck, lifting
the burly South Carolinian out of his saddle. As Longstreet put it in his memoir, "the
flow of blood admonished me that my work for the day was done."

Even while being carried off the field on a
stretcher, the general urged that the attack be continued. But hours passed as
Confederate troops were reformed, a delay that was exacerbated by the arrival of
Burnside's Ninth Corps on Longstreet's left flank. Grant had ordered Burnside to attack
near dawn, but in characteristic fashion, it took the Rhode Islander until two o'clock
in the afternoon to go into action. Finally, about five o'clock, the Confederate attacks
resumed. Concealed by smoke that blinded the Union troops, Longstreet's men briefly
breached a portion of the Union lines, but failures elsewhere forced a withdrawal.

At dusk, Confederate general John B. Gordon, of Ewell's corps, attacked Sedgwick's
Sixth Corps on the right end of the Union line, briefly breaking through and capturing
hundreds of prisoners, including two Union generals. Ewell had been aware of the
vulnerability earlier in the day, but had prevaricated. Now it was too late to push the
advantage. This moment became the subject of much controversy after the war, with former
Confederates using Ewell to deflect blame away from Lee. (Much the same happened to
Ewell based on his decision not to attack Culp's Hill on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg.)

The Aftermath

The Confederates' tactical victory had cost a
little more than 11,000 killed, wounded, and captured, while Union casualties numbered
nearly 18,000 men. Compounding the horror of the battle, small brush fires that raged
through the undergrowth burned many wounded soldiers alive, filling the woods with smoke
and ghastly cries. The scene prompted a famous drawing by artist Alfred R. Waud that
appeared in Harper's Weekly on June 4, 1864: "Army of the
Potomac—Our Wounded Escaping from the Fires of the Wilderness."

The three days of fighting, meanwhile, revealed deep flaws in the command structure of
the Army of Northern Virginia. A. P. Hill had erred when he failed to improve his lines
on the night of May 5, while his recurring illness, which dated back to his West Point
days and flared up during times of stress, incapacitated him for portions of the battle.
Ewell, too, performed poorly, particularly on May 6. And Longstreet, Lee's ablest
subordinate, would take five months to recuperate and return to the army.

Although disappointed by the tactical setbacks,
Grant refused to accept defeat, and in doing so transformed the battle into a strategic
victory for the Union. When a general worried about Lee's next move, Grant tersely
replied, "I am heartily tired of hearing what Lee is going to do. Some of you always
seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land on our rear and
on both our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we
are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do."

And what Grant did, instead of retreating as the Army of the Potomac had always done in
the past, was march south. When the troops realized what was happening, they wildly and
spontaneously cheered Grant. The Northern press followed suit, praising the
general-in-chief's determination to confront Lee. The bloody reward of that
determination—Spotsylvania Court
House, North Anna River,
and Cold Harbor, when Northern
morale would be most sorely tested and Grant would be catcalled a "butcher"—was yet to
come.

Time Line

March 17, 1864
- Union general Ulysses S. Grant takes command of all U.S. forces and establishes his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac at Culpeper Court House.

May 2, 1864
- Orders are issued to the Army of the Potomac to begin the spring campaign. Confederate general Robert E. Lee gathers corps and division commanders on Clark's Mountain overlooking the Union camps and correctly projects that Union troops will move around his right.

May 3, 1864, 11 p.m.–midnight
- The Army of the Potomac's Second Corps begins its march toward the Rapidan River at the start of the Overland Campaign.

May 4, 1864, 2 a.m.
- Union troops take key Rapidan River crossings at Germanna and Ely's fords and construct pontoon bridges just ahead of the Battle of the Wilderness.

May 4, 1864, 12 p.m.
- Confederate infantry begins shifting east to oppose the advancing Army of the Potomac. The two armies' collision will result in the Battle of the Wilderness at the start of the Overland Campaign.

May 4, 1864, 3 p.m.
- Lead elements of the Union army set up temporary camp in the seventy-square-mile patch of woods and undergrowth known as the Wilderness.

May 5, 1864, 1 p.m.
- Forces of the Union Fifth Corps under Gouverneur Warren attack Confederate general Richard S. Ewell's corps at Saunders Field and Higgerson Field during the Battle of the Wilderness.

May 5, 1864, 3 p.m.
- Union general Winfield Scott Hancock's Second Corps and a portion of John Sedgwick's Sixth Corps attack Confederate general A. P. Hill's corps along the Orange Plank Road during the Battle of the Wilderness.

May 6, 1864, 5 a.m.
- The Union Second Corps and portions of the Fifth and Sixth corps attack A. P. Hill's Confederates, driving them across the Widow Tapp's Field during the Battle of the Wilderness.

May 6, 1864, 7 a.m.
- Troops under Confederate general James Longstreet arrive to reinforce A. P. Hill's men, thrown back by an attack from Union general Winfield Scott Hancock's Second Corps. They counterattack across the Widow Tapp's Field during the Battle of the Wilderness.

May 6, 1864, 11 a.m.
- Confederate general James Longstreet launches a flank attack from the cover of an unfinished railroad cut about and rolls up a portion of the Union line during the Battle of the Wilderness.

May 6, 1864, 12 p.m.
- James Longstreet is badly wounded in the neck and right shoulder by "friendly" fire from Confederate troops during the Battle of the Wilderness. He is shot just a few miles from where Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson was mortally wounded, also by friendly fire, at the Battle of Chancellorsville a year earlier, on May 2, 1863.

May 6, 1864, 4 p.m.
- Confederate general James Longstreet's troops attack Union positions on the Brock Road during the Battle of the Wilderness.

May 6, 1864, 6 p.m.
- During the Battle of the Wilderness, and after much delay, Confederate general Richard S. Ewell's troops launch a flank attack against John Sedgwick's Sixth Corps. They realize limited gains until night brings the fighting to a close.

May 7, 1864
- Cavalry fighting occurs along the Brock Road intended to open the road for Union movement south following the Battle of the Wilderness. Union general Ulysses S. Grant's troops begin marching south toward Spotsylvania Court House about 8 p.m.

Contributed by Gregory A. Mertz, supervisory historian at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park
and author of "No Turning Back: The Battle of the Wilderness." Parts 1 and 2. Blue and Gray Magazine 12 (April and June, 1995).